


reason

by amaelamin



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Depression, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 07:42:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7609576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaelamin/pseuds/amaelamin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fic request: AU where sungyeol has been considering killing himself, but doesn't have the guts to do it himself. Myungsoo offers to assist because he has nothing to lose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	reason

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on AFF on 12 oct 2013.

“That’s an incredibly selfish way to do it, just so you know.”

Sungyeol feels the words before he hears them, and turns his head toward the sound behind him. He’d thought he was alone up here; apparently not. He has a momentary wondering thought at the difference between dead and live flesh – now his muscles obey the slightest unconscious command from his brain, animating his body into the outer semblance of a live person. In the span of ten seconds, had he truly been alone, he’d have been on his way to be meat cooling on the sidewalk without a personality, or memories, or emotions. He blinks – his body is doing a good job of taking care of itself, as usual. Lubricating his eyes, pumping blood through his veins, lungs going reliably. If only a well-functioning shell wasn’t all he was.

A boy pushes himself off wall and deep shadow to emerge into the artificial floodlight of the university’s engineering block’s rooftop. Sungyeol is still thinking of how life persists until that very last second, the last eternal moment before a body hits the pavement ten stories below them and every sign of life is wiped out.

“Think of the people who have to scrape you off the sidewalk. Think of the people who have to see your skull smash open. Seriously?” He lifts his cigarette to his lips with slightly trembling fingers for one last inhale. Sungyeol notes this, and then discards the knowledge as useless.

“Fuck off,” Sungyeol says tiredly, and then because there is no reason not to – “You got a better idea?”

“I do, actually,” the boy says, flicking his cigarette over the parapet where Sungyeol is poised, one hand still gripping the railing behind him. Their eyes both follow the glowing red tip as it arcs in the air and quickly disappears from sight.

“I can make it so you’ve never existed.” The boy’s hand is held out to Sungyeol who looks at it stupidly; elegant fingers with dirty fingernails. “Or get rid of the problem you’re having so that you don’t need to off yourself. Whichever’s easier. I’m Myungsoo.”

Sungyeol turns his face back to the sky and breathes in, leaving Myungsoo’s hand outstretched and ignored. Myungsoo nudges his arm impatiently. “Come on, I haven’t got all day.”

“Sorry,” Sungyeol mumbles, and lets go.

Myungsoo curses violently, and vanishes back into the shadows.

**

He steps out ahead of Sungyeol as the other makes his way up the stairs, blocking him abruptly with a hand to his chest. Sungyeol looks up, trying to feel annoyed. He settles for attempting to simply move around Myungsoo, but Myungsoo doesn’t let him.

“Stop it, you stubborn bastard. Now, you’re on your way up to the roof to kill yourself. Ask me how I know this.”

“Whatever,” Sungyeol mumbles, turning around to go down the stairs again. There are a lot of rooftops in this area.

“Nononono,” Myungsoo grabs the back of Sungyeol’s sweater and yanks it so that Sungyeol can’t keep going. Sungyeol turns around with a furrow in his brow, face still downcast but arm pushing Myungsoo away with real intent.

“Oh hey, he shows signs of life! And I don’t even mean that ironically, given the situation. Listen, man, I’m not messing with you. The reason why I know why you were on your way up there was because I was just up there with you. I told you not to jump because it’s too disgustingly messy and I said I have a better way out. You ignored me and jumped anyway so I went back in time ten minutes to wait here for you and make you listen.” Myungsoo is a little out of breath by the end of this speech, and as his breath came in tiny pants he tries to gauge Sungyeol’s reaction. Sungyeol just stares at him.

“Went back in time.”

“Yes. _Really._ I know this sounds crazy but I promise, I’m not trying to pull some cruel joke on you. I’m trying to help. Let me show you?”

“You have a time machine, and instead of going back in time to see the dinosaurs, or see the – I dunno, the pyramids being built or whatever, you’re standing here asking to help me kill myself?”

“Look, it’s a long story and I know it sounds insane but it’s _true_. They scared the shit out of me, confiscated all my research – everything, every fucking paper and plan and prototype – and my other machine – but I made another one. They don’t know about this one. They shut me down so fast, I don’t think just the university is in on this – but anyway. I can’t sell it, I can’t let anyone know about it,” Myungsoo stops, and Sungyeol watches him.

“But I didn’t make this for myself. I want someone to experience it too, even if it’s just once before I have to bury it or destroy it. They made it pretty fucking clear what would happen to me if I was hiding anything from them.”

“Who’s them?” Sungyeol asks, because he feels it’s expected of him.

“I don’t know. Official-looking guys. SHIELD, maybe,” Myungsoo said, giving a short laugh which petered out at the look on Sungyeol’s face. “SHIELD? Like in the Avengers?”

“You’re not going to let me go until I agree, are you?”

“Or HYDRA, who knows,” Myungsoo ended, deflating. “No, I’m not.”

“Fine. I can always kill myself tomorrow.”

“Great!”

**

Myungsoo lets the shadow overhanging the wall cover him, trying to stop his hands from shaking. His hands are already reaching for a cigarette to steady his nerves for what he was about to do, and it lights on the second try.

It’s the end of his life – everything he’s worked for, years of research and fine-tuning and failure, all gone. The one major contribution of his existence to science, the _world_ , the thing his parents have been hoping for with towering expectations since he was only thirteen and whispers of ‘genius’ began to circulate – stolen, shut down, hidden away.

The familiar anger is boiling up inside him once more, deep and dark with the crushing despair that has gripped him for a week – he is nothing without his computers, without his numbers and equations. He will never be able to top this. He has that other secret machine, but for what? Nobody can ever know. Nobody else will ever use it. _He will never be able to top this._

Another boy walks by him without noticing that someone else is there, and he is distracted for a moment. The boy walks, back straight and calm, to the same parapet he was going to use, and dispassionately surveys it a moment. He swings one long leg over to the other side, keeping a firm grip on the railing with one hand. He steadies himself, and then brings the other leg over. Myungsoo’s heart begins to pound deafeningly, because this boy –

“That’s an incredibly selfish way to do it, just so you know.”

The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, and the self-mockery that laces them are lost on the other boy. His hands won’t stop shaking, and he doesn’t understand why. He doesn’t want this boy to die, and he doesn’t understand why.

The boy turns his head slowly to face him, and the blankness Myungsoo sees there drives something cold into his gut. He swallows and pushes off the wall, not knowing what else to do other than keep talking and start moving, as if he could will both bodies to remain animate.

“Think of the people who have to scrape you off the sidewalk. Think of the people who have to see your skull smash open. Seriously?”

Myungsoo tries for levity, and fails miserably. He takes a deep drag on his cigarette to cover the bone-shaking fear he’s feeling, and wants to just rush over there and yank the boy back over the railing. Confronted with the reality of his own intentions, Myungsoo finds he never had the courage to take that final step – this boy is composedly hanging off the side of a building as if he’s considered it at length carefully and logically and this is the only course of action open to him; Myungsoo now thinks of how he had meant to do the same and he can’t stop the screaming in his head.

“Fuck off,” the boy is saying tiredly. “You got a better idea?”

And then it hits him.

“I do, actually,” Myungsoo says, brain firing and the cool, sterile bloom of an idea washing over him. This boy was the answer. He will be the first stranger to try out Myungsoo’s machine, and if he still wanted to kill himself at the end of it all, even better – Myungsoo doesn’t even wince at the callousness of this thought – Myungsoo would have given his creation to at least one other human, and yet nobody existing would know. And then – and then from there, who knows? He could hide his machine, move it from place to place, reveal it to only people like this – Myungsoo flicked his cigarette over the parapet in his excitement, desperately latching on to this sliver of hope. This boy was everything, now.

“I can make it so you’ve never existed.” Myungsoo holds his hand out to the boy, frantically remembering from somewhere a scrap of advice for talking someone down from committing suicide; make a connection, make them see you as a person. Tell them your name. “Or get rid of the problem you’re having so that you don’t need to off yourself. Whichever’s easier. I’m Myungsoo.” _Please_.

He sees the boy look at his hand, and he has to restrain himself from just grabbing the boy and dragging him backwards – he looks thin enough –

The boy jumps anyway, and Myungsoo feels a part of him die in the moment it takes for the boy to drop out of sight.

 _No!_ , Myungsoo screams silently, and runs, heading instinctively for his machine.

**


End file.
